Top Android smartphones (July 2014 edition)

Introduction

Time once again to take a tour of a handful of the best Android phones currently available on the market (July 2014). There are a few new handsets, including a couple for all you pure Android fans. Carrying space limited? If so, you might want to check out the Sony Xperia Z1 Compact with its 4.3-inch display!

Here are a handful of the best Android-powered handsets currently on offer, so whether you're after a handset for personal use, of one suited to BYOD, there bound to be one here for you.

We have a few new kids on the block. Amazon's Fire Phone, the LG G3, and a new "Active" version of the Galaxy S5.

If I had to choose one of these, I'd still more than likely go for Google's Nexus 5 because it is a powerful, fully-featured handset packed that offers the purest Android experience possible. It's the only handset that will guarantee that I see Android updates over the course of its lifespan.

However, I have to admit that some of the features present on the Samsung Galaxy S5 make it a great choice for the BYOD crowd. Not only is it water- and dust-resistant – something Samsung doesn't talk much about – but it is also crammed with cool features and software. If you like to geek out over smartphones, this is the one to geek out over.

As we'd expect from Amazon, we have a device built using quality but widely used parts, but with the emphasis put on delivering a product that is itself unique, functional and tightly bound to the Amazon ecosystem.

The screen is, and is always the case with Amazon products, the highlight. It is a 4.7-inch industry-leading ultra-bright display making the handset suited to use in bright sunshine. It features dynamic image contrast to keep the image clear – as opposed to just altering the brightness which is what most smartphones do) and also features a circular polarizer to reduce glare.

The camera too is a big feature. The F2.0 lens gives it excellent low-light capability, beating what Apple and Samsung can go in tests carried out by Amazon.

It's clear that Amazon has once again put the hardware focus on the bit that users see the most – the screen.

Quad-core 2.2GHz processor

Adremo 330 GPU

2GB RAM

4.7-inch IPS 1,280 x 720 retina display with 315 pixels-per-inch, dynamic contrast and circular polarizer for outdoor use (the rumored 3D display turns out to be a software-driven dynamic perspective effect as opposed to true 3D)

Gorilla Glass 3 scratch-resistant screen with rubber frame

13MP rear-facing camera with F2.0 five element lens (giving it good low-light capability) and optical stabilization, and can capture full HD video at 30FPS

Four 120-degree field-of-view front-facing cameras with IR illumination for head tracking for the dynamic perspective feature

Sony Xperia Z Ultra

Tech Pro Research

A newcomer to the list. Sony's Xperia Z Ultra packs a lot of cool features under the hood, sporting the sharpest LCD panel on the market, and a 13-megapixel camera capable of capturing HDR video.

This handset is also thin, coming in at a svelte 6.5-milimeters. But don't the thinness fool you; the Xperia Z Ultra is tough, featuring tempered glass, and a dustproof and waterproof build, rated to with IP58.

This is the smartphone you need if you want to be able to submerge it in 1 meter of water and still have a working handset.

3050mAh battery offering 16 hours of talk time, up to 820 hours of standby

Published: July 1, 2014 -- 08:56 GMT (01:56 PDT)

Photo by: Sony

Caption by: Adrian Kingsley-Hughes

Motorola Moto X

I used to be pretty partial to Motorola handsets back before the iPhone. They were well built, and while they relied heavily on gimmicks, delivered decent performance and long-term reliability.

The Moto X is interesting, not because it is manufactured by Motorola – now owned by Google – but because it takes a new approach to computation power. Rather than one chip with multiple cores doing the work, the Moto X has a total of eight cores spread over four different chips, each doing a different thing. This is supposed to both speed up the handset and make the battery last longer.

Oh, and it's also built in the U.S.

Jelly Bean (Android 4.2.2)

Motorola X8 computing system, consisting of a Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro dual-core clocked at 1.7GHz, a quad-core Adreno 320 GPU, and two low-power processors, one that is used for natural language and the other for contextual computing

4.7-inch AMOLED HD 720p display

10MP rear camera

2MP front camera

16/32GB internal storage

NFC

2200mAh battery offering 13 hours of talk time, up to 575 hours of standby

Published: July 1, 2014 -- 08:56 GMT (01:56 PDT)

Photo by: Motorola

Caption by: Adrian Kingsley-Hughes

LG G3

Tech Pro Research

Building on the success of the G2, LG looks to take on Android smartphone giant Samsung with the G3. LG has taken the good points of the G2 and made changes such as adding a microSD card slot and removable battery, features which users had asked for.

A solid, well-rounded phablet.

Android 4.4.2 'KitKat'

2.5 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 quad-core processor

5.5-inch QHD IPS 2,560x1,440 display featuring 534-pixel-per-inch

13MP rear camera

2.1MP front camera

16/32GB internal storage

microSD card support

3000mAh battery offering 21 hours of talk time, up to 550 hours of standby

Published: July 1, 2014 -- 08:56 GMT (01:56 PDT)

Photo by: LG

Caption by: Adrian Kingsley-Hughes

Google Nexus 5

Not only has it been put together using some of the best components currently available, it also offers the purest Android experience possible, and gives owners access to the latest Android 4.4 KitKat. Owners also will get their updates direct from Google and won't need to wait for hardware OEMs or carriers to release customized updates (or just never receive updates, as is still the case with many handsets).

I've always found Nexus-branded hardware to be solid and reliable, and this is no different now that the operating system has seen a few updates.

KitKat (Android 4.4)

2.23GHz quad-core Snapdragon 800 CPU

4.95-inch 1920x1080 display with a pixel density of 445 pixels-per-inch

8MP rear camera

1.3MP front camera

16/32GB internal storage

2300mAh battery offering 17 hours of talk time, up to 300 hours of standby

2800mAh battery offering 21 hours of talk time, up to 390 hours of standby

Published: July 1, 2014 -- 08:56 GMT (01:56 PDT)

Photo by: Samsung

Caption by: Adrian Kingsley-Hughes

Sony Xperia Z2

Another new entry that was unveiled at this years MWC bash.

The water and dust-resistant Xperia Z2 comes only six months after the previous Xperia Z1 flagship was released, but this update has everything you'd expect – larger display, faster processor, better camera and support for the latest Android 4.4 KitKat release. Also in are stereo speakers and noise cancellation technology.

KitKat (Android 4.4)

5.2-inch IPS LED display with a pixel density of 424 pixels-per-inch

2.3GHz quad-core Snapdradon 801 processor with Adreno 330 GPU

20.7MP rear camera

2.2MP front camera

16GB internal storage

microSD card support

3200mAh battery offering 19 hours of talk time, up to 740 hours of standby

Looking like the original HTC One, the One M8 features an unibody aluminum shell which gives it a firm feel, unlike the Samsung Galaxy S4 with its plastic shell.

Inside the shell is everything you'd expect from a modern Android smartphone – a large, high-pixel-density display, a powerful quad-core processor, plenty of storage, good cameras, and a microSD card for storage expansion which supports cards up to 128GB.

KitKat (Android 4.2.2) with HTC Sense

2.3GHz quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 801

5-inch Full HD, 1080p display (441 pixels-per-inch)

4MP rear camera

4MP UltraPixel front camera

16/32GB internal storage

microSD card slot

2600mAh battery offering 20 hours of talk time, up to 495 hours of standby

Published: July 1, 2014 -- 08:56 GMT (01:56 PDT)

Photo by: HTC

Caption by: Adrian Kingsley-Hughes

Sony Xperia Z1 Compact

At a time when smartphones are lowly being transformed into devices with the surface area of an aircraft carrier, it's good to come across a device with a more modest display.

The Sony Xperia Z1 Compact packs the same quad-core processor, 4G LTE connectivity and 20-megapixel camera as the Sony top-end Xperia Z1 but in a device with only a 4.3-inch display.

KitKat (Android 4.4)

4.3-inch 1280x720 TRILUMINOS display

2.2 GHz Qualcomm MSM8974 processor

20.7MP rear camera

2MP front camera

Water and dustproof

16GB internal storage

microSD card support

2300mAh battery offering 18 hours of talk time, up to 670 hours of standby

At 5.4 inches tall and 2.8 inches wide, Motorola's Droid Maxx is a pricey handset is a big handset, but if you want a slab of a handset clad in Kevlar, then this could very well be the handset you are looking for. On top of that you get a 48-hour charge, lots of power, wireless-free charging, and 65GB of Google Drive storage.

Time once again to take a tour of a handful of the best Android phones currently available on the market (July 2014). Here are a handful of the best Android-powered handsets currently on offer, some new, some old, so whether you're after a handset for personal use, of one suited to BYOD, there bound to be one here for you.

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Samsung Galaxy S5 Active

Like Samsung's Galaxy S5, but without the fingerprint reader and with the addition of a more durable shell.

KitKat (Android 4.4)

5.1-inch Full HD Super AMOLED with a pixel density of 415 pixels-per-inch